3-nanometer chips will be ready for 2022 iPhone

The A-series chip in Apple’s 2020 iPhone is likely to take advantage of the 5-nanometer technology developed by chip designer TSMC. However, the chip giant is already hard at work on a 3-nanometer process it thinks will be ready in 2022.

You know, just in time for the iPhone 12S and 12R or whatever Apple calls them!

The comments come from TSMC senior vice president for fab operations, JK Wang. According to Wang, TSMC is on track to move 5nm process technology to commercial production in 2020. It will then kick off production of chips built using the 3nm process node in 2022.

The current iPhone A-Series chip is made using TSMC’s 7-nanometer process.

Achieving smaller numbers of nanometers between transistors is no guarantee of performance boosts. However, it does mean being able to pack more on which can greatly improve performance. 3-nanometer chips would be a massive achievement for TSMC at a time when some people worry that Moore’s Law may be coming to an end. Moore’s law states that the number of transistors on a circuit board roughly doubles every 12-18 months thanks to advances in miniaturization.

Godfrey Cheng, TSMC’s marketing head, recently wrote that: “Some people believe that Moore’s Law is dead because they believe it is no longer possible to continue to shrink the transistor any further.” On the other hand, he is confident it will continue. And who are we to doubt the world’s leading chipmaker?